


Pass The Pictures Around

by Rainah (RainahFiclets)



Series: A Part For You Too [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Eliza: not sure if scandalized or a little turned on, Lots of poly love and teasing, Multi, Scrapbooks, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-25 11:38:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6193687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainahFiclets/pseuds/Rainah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But Alex grinned like a cat who'd just spotted cream. He turned to Philip. "Did I ever tell you about your dad's punk phase?"</p><p>"Punk phase?" Eliza asked slowly, looking from one of her partners to the other.</p><p>"<i>Punk phase?!</i>" Philip echoed gleefully.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pass The Pictures Around

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cellardoors_and_petrichor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cellardoors_and_petrichor/gifts).



> Belongs to a bigger Elams 'verse I've been working on. Eliza, Alex, and John are somewhere between a V poly setup and a proper triad, but they live together and raise their large brood of children and terrify the other PTA moms.
> 
> Alex's compass tattoo is a line from the poem he wrote on Nevis. You know, _that_ poem.
> 
> John's tattoos are something like this: https://40.media.tumblr.com/6b96150e57936dea06d585772b310af3/tumblr_nw7iz8qDZx1u9a497o1_500.jpg  
> but nature scenes

It started the day Philip came home three hours late with a guilty look in his eye and a long sleeved shirt he hadn't been wearing that morning. 

Alex looked up from his laptop and sighed. "Did you get into a fight at school? Because if you hit Jefferson's daughter again-" 

"No!" Philip protested, brushing back his curls. "I was just. Cold!" 

"Philip," Alex said slowly, "That's not your shirt. You borrowed it from Georges, you're obviously hiding something." There was no way their Philip Hamilton owned a silk dress shirt. There was no way anyone but Lafayette's son owned a silk dress shirt at their school.

"Is Philip home?" John, an apron around his hips, stepped out of the kitchen. "Just in time for dinner. Eliza! Philip's home!"

"Is he? Oh good, I was getting worried." She had glasses perched on her nose and their youngest, William, asleep in her arms. "Where were you, young man?" 

"He is," Alex said, drawing their attention back to him, "and Philip was apparently _so cold_ he had to borrow a shirt from his friend that happens to cover his arms. So I'd like to hear the answer to that too." All three turned to look back at their son. 

Philip pushed his curls back again. "Okay, so don't be mad-" 

"Did you get into another fight with your teacher Philip we talked-" 

"No Dad, I was just-" 

"Does it have anything to do Theodosia?" 

" _Mom, no!_ Okay look!" And with that he pushed up the arm of the shirt. There was a tattoo on his left forearm, fresh and red from the needle. 

"It's two guns, Dad," He explained to Alex weakly. "Like, 'hey look I've got guns'?" 

Eliza handed their baby to John. She folded her arms and she did not look happy. "You got a tattoo. So you could _make puns about it_." 

"Dad has tattoos!" Philip protested, looking over to John in the living room and then to Alex. "Both of them!” 

They did indeed. Alex had a compass design and the words _Succour the miserable and lay up a treasure in Heaven_ written on his ribs, and an ill-advised unicorn on his lower back. He'd gotten it out of curiosity, mostly, after tracing his fingers across John's tattoos one too many times. 

Because John's arms were covered in them, enough to make the PTA moms look sideways at school events. He didn't have sleeves per say, but up and down his arms were various designs. Mostly nature scenes, done in watercolors and a careful hand. 

And Eliza had an infinity symbol somewhere they weren't about to talk about, so she really couldn’t judge their son. 

John, still holding William, reached out his other arm to tilt Philip's tattoo into the light. "This is good work. Where did you go?" 

"Georges took me after class. His cousin got one done at this place downtown..." 

"Three Kings, yeah." He nodded, familiar with the shop and the area. 

"John," Eliza's voice caused them all to turn. "Our son is _eighteen_. He should not be getting tattoos." 

"Yes, he might turn out like one of his fathers," Alex snorted. "How old were you, John?" 

John flushed. "It's not the same thing." 

But Alex grinned like a cat who'd just spotted cream. He turned to Philip. "Did I ever tell you about your dad's punk phase?" 

"Punk phase?" Eliza asked slowly, looking from one of her partners to the other. 

" _Punk phase?!_ " Philip echoed gleefully. 

"Alex," John tried, but Alex was already walking over to the bookshelf 

"The album's here somewhere..." 

He could hear John behind him, trying to hand William off to Philip, and Eliza giggling at their partner's distress. "Oh my god, Alex I am begging." 

"Wait I wanna see!" 

"Eliza, you are supposed to be backing me up here not siding with him!" 

"Sometimes, my dear Laurens," Alex said, holding up the photo album, "You must bite the bullet. The Bullet For My Valentine, as it were." 

John flushed. "That was _one concert_ , Alex, _ten years ago_." 

Eliza grinned. Philip, now holding his younger brother, craned his neck to see. "Come on!" 

Alex flipped through the book, painstakingly complied of pictures from university. All the way until- "There:" 

John, hair still short but starting to curl down the back of his neck, dressed in filthy ripped jeans and band t-shirt. Both ears are pierced. He's smiling at the camera, but there's an edge to him, an unsettling force lurking beneath the flash of white teeth. Like he was baring them instead of smiling. 

Eliza grinned. "John! I didn't know you were a hooligan in college." 

"This was before we met you in senior year. This was.... freshmen? You don't have the eyebrow done yet," Alex said. 

"....Eyebrow piercing?" 

John groaned. Alex grinned. He flipped the page, "There it is!" 

John again, bent over a desk with his headphones on. Judging by the length of his hair the picture had been taken several months later. That, and the fact that there was both an eyebrow piercing and the hint of a tattoo peaking out from under his sleeve. 

Eliza looked from one to another. "Don't tell me. The next picture's going to be Alex with a frenulum piercing." 

That earned her a short bark of laughter from both men, and sent Philip scrambling upstairs muttering that he was going to put William to bed. 

"Eliza," Alex said, "If I had my dick pierced I think you would know." 

"I didn't know John had just about everything _but_ his dick pierced at one point in his life!" Eliza protested, flipping over the page to prove her point. There was another piercing in that one, a hoop at the top of his ear. She looked up at John suddenly. "Wait. Did you get your dick pierced?" Both Alex and John were laughing too hard to answer. " _Did you?!_ " 

Finally, wiping a tear away, John patted her on the shoulder. "Could never go through with it. Eyebrow, both ears, the top of one ear, and back of the neck. Took everything but the earlobes out when I regained some sense in second year." 

They were all sitting very close. Close enough for Alex to lean over and give John a deep, slow kiss. Then he pulled back and smacked his lips against Eliza's nose. She giggled. 

"And you, my love?" she asked, gesturing down at the album. "Are you going to show me pictures of your hooligan days?" 

John snorted. "His hooligan days involved stealing my sweaters and drinking too much coffee." 

"So not much different than today?" 

"Not really, no" 

"Hey!" Alex wasn't quite sure how _he_ ended up the recipient of their teasing. _He_ wasn't the one who listened to terrible metal bands and who'd wrecked his first three cars in college. "I will tell her about your drunken op-ed, John Laurens, don't think that I won't." 

John stared. "You wouldn't _dare_." 

He could still quote it perfectly from memory. "'Knowing the fire destroyed only the houses of rich, obnoxious frat boys, I cannot bring myself to regret it. Karl Marx is looking down from heaven and approving this cosmic distribution of wealth-'" 

John hit him in the stomach, effectively shutting him up. "I was drunk! Leave me alone!" 

"And how drunk were you when you wrote this?" Eliza murmured. 

"Three beers!" 

Alex shot him a look. 

"Fine. Four beers. The paper refused to print it so the only people who saw it were the people who read Alex's blog-" 

"-Of which there are many!" 

"I installed your hit-counter, babe, there aren't-" 

"Boys!" Eliza interrupted them, which was probably a good thing because Alex could talk about it all day. Senator _Washington_ read his blog, after all. So did Jefferson, if only to have something to complain about. "Please try and behave. We have to figure out what to do about Philip." 

"He is eighteen, dear." Alex shrugged. "Let the boy get a tattoo." 

"He got it to make _puns_ , Alexander, give it six months-" 

"-And if he hates it he can get it covered." John added reasonably. "He's young. We all do stupid things when we're young." 

Eliza sighed. "Like shacking up with two very irresponsible hooligans?" But she leaned over and kissed Alex, and ran her hand through John's hair. "I'm going to make sure Philip and William are okay." 

"And we hooligans are lucky that you did," Alex smiled, turning back to the photos. He flipped the pages over, still surprised at the difference between the photos and the man sitting in front of him. John's hair was still long, and he still wore a stud in one ear, but he was... calmer. More settled. Like he knew his place in the world. Alex looked down, tracing the lines of John's neck on the page, his bared teeth smile. "I forgot how unhappy you looked in these." 

John shrugged. "I was. It was a long time ago." 

"What made you stop?" 

"Hercules." John's smile was gentle, rueful. "Told me that it didn't matter if I was obeying my dad or rebelling against him, I was still letting him control my life." 

Alex leaned over, capturing his lips with a kiss. A kiss that tried to say _I love you. I always have, I always will._ They stayed like that, holding one another, deepening the kiss until John had to pull away for air. Alex took the opportunity to press slow, lazy, nipping kissing into his lover's neck. "I'm glad you're better now. Even if I miss the leather jacket a bit." 

"There's a leather jacket?" Eliza called from the top of the stairs, and they pulled away. She had been watching them, eyes bright and colour high on her cheeks. "Do you, ah, still have that by any chance?" 

"I think so?" he called back, looking at Alex for confirmation. Alex shrugged. It might be in the back of the front closet somewhere. 

"Go and get it, and meet me upstairs." Eliza grinned. Alex flushed, looking from one of his loves to the other, and rushed to obey.


End file.
